Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Category: musings

March 15, 2019

Oh Be Careful Little Brain What You Believe

Whenever there is a horrible violent act like the terrorist attack in Christchurch, I want to say something. I want to offer thoughts and prayers, but I know they can be vapid. I want to say how broken-hearted I am, but that just puts the focus on me. I want to say how much I hate the beliefs and ideas that inspired the terrorists, but that seems easy.

So I’ll offer this: We must be careful what we believe. I’ve always thought that we cannot choose what we believe, that the mechanisms which produce and sustain convictions are more or less out of our control. But there’s a lot more to it.

If you really want to believe something, you’ll find a way to make it fit. These terrorist attacks were the result of deep conviction and sincere belief. These terrorists acted according to their hateful ideas.

We must be on guard for the seeds of hate we let take root in our minds and hearts. They start small and, and might not give a hint as to how they will grow.

The immigrants are stealing our jobs.
The LGBTQ agenda is poisoning our kids.
The Muslims want to Islamify the West.
The OTHERS threaten the US.

Ideas about race, religion, or any kind of identity threatening our own liberty are dangerous. Do not allow these ideas to grow. Call them out. Expose them so they cannot sprout.

Terrorists are tempted by the desire for easy answers to complicated situations. Desire conceives belief. Belief, full-grown, can bring forth death.

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January 7, 2019

Communion

One of the biggest pains in spiritual deconstruction is lost community. We were bound together in Christ. When Christ is gone, that bond is broken. I feel this most pointedly at church when I am warned by the pastor not to take part in communion. The Lord’s table is for the Lord’s people, he tells us. For unbelievers like myself, it would be a meal of judgment rather than blessing.

Communion signals the kind of relationship Churchgoers are to have with each other: Eating from the same loaf and drinking from the same cup, as if all were one body. It’s like the feeding of the 5000; no one gets their own, but everyone gets enough.

On New Year’s Eve, I sat around a table with old friends. One of us had a glass of wine. Another came with a freshly-baked roll. Spontaneously, we tore pieces from the roll, dipped them in the wine, and ate together. I realized I don’t need church services for this kind of communion. I can commune with my people, wherever I find them.

Happy New Year, and may you have people to share bread and wine with.

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August 22, 2018

The problem is diplomacy is all your troops freeze in panic

I’m speaking, of course, of the skill in Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

When you are good at diplomacy, troops that would otherwise attack your army, may join it instead, “For greater glory.”

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Sound great? It is!

Near the beginning of the game, without spending a single gold, you can have a horde from every tongue and tribe and nation. Crusaders and dragons and dwarves and liches, all part of one glorious host.

But they generally do poorer than they should in actual combat. Soldiers tend to freeze in panic, and even when you win there are more losses than their needs to be. Troops from other cities tend not to love each other, and everyone hates the undead. Morale drops. Everyone starts to wonder what they’re even fighting for.

There are reasons for this.

The game’s campaign details bitter struggles between the nations. If you want this horde from every tongue and tribe, you to give them something higher than history to bind them together. Remind them why they joined you in the first place: Greater Glory.

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October 17, 2017

Saint Matthew’s Angel

I found a great painting at a thrift store the other day. An older-looking man is giving rapt attention to an angel, who tells a story and plays with their fingers. You can picture the child-like voice saying, “And then… and then…” It’s called Saint Matthew, and the Angel, by Guido Reni.

 

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There are other paintings of Matthew with his muse. This one’s by Caravaggio. He has the angel sensually guiding Matt’s hand to write something that, judging by his raised brow and tight grip on the book, blows his freaking mind.

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Another by Caravaggio has Matt presumably driven to the writing desk in the middle of the night. He looks more than a little freaked out, balancing on the stool and trying to write whatever the angel is counting off.

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Rembrandt did one, too. His Matthew is solemn, and his hand hovers under his chin as if he completed a beard stroke. The angel whispers from behind now. There’s less urgency than in the others, but more depth.

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I don’t know much about the inner workings of creativity, but I’ve always loved the idea of a supernatural muse, some capricious but lovely whisperer that helps me write my things.

Who tells a simple child-like story that can pull the cynicism out of an old man’s eyes.

Who tells a tender truth easily pointed out that paralyzes us with wonder even as we try to write it.

Who pulls us from bed sometimes with something that will be lost if not recorded now, at this moment, in this spirit.

And who sometimes quietly, from behind, speaks with a depth that gives great pause.

 

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April 27, 2017

Happy Birthday Deva

It’s Dev’s birthday today. He’s four and I don’t have any pictures of him. I mean, Ruth posted some shots at Easter, but he was only three at Easter. I need some four-year-old pictures, Ruth. Get on it.

Meanwhile, here’s some nice scenic shots.

Be back in a jiffy.

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April 21, 2017

Letting Conditions Go

I’m reading a book called The Poisonwood Bible about a missionary who takes his wife and daughters to the Congo in the late 50s. It gets so familiar that it jars me. I like to think that my missionary philosophy was a direct response to his. He wanted to show Africa the power of American Evangelicalism. I wanted to see some kind of Sindhi Evangelicalism take root. We called it Incarnational Ministry, and Paul’s commitment to “become all things to all people” was my modus operandi.

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It made me a gentler missionary than Nathan Price, I suppose. And it allowed me to see some beauty in Pakistan and her cultures. But I was still a fundamentalist, so I couldn’t see the value of any faith here, except insofar as it accorded with the core of my own.

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So despite my desi dress and family and lifestyle, I was still set apart–in Sindh but not of it. I suppose I took it as a badge of honour at the time. But my constant dissatisfaction with the way my neighbours worshipped and viewed the world built a wall around me, and they could sense it.

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I’ve come to embrace a new mantra since then, borrowed from a Christian ska band: Freedom means love without condition. I still can’t say that I am of Sindh, but I can embrace my family and friends here with a kind of abandon I wasn’t able to before. I’m thankful for that much.

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April 20, 2017

Changing Sindh

Construction is real in Sindh. Many of the roads have been completely re-done. Here in Sanghar the main road used to be a bumpy mess of rocks and water that would never completely dry up. Now it’s as smooth as anything you’d drive on in Canada.

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Once you get out of the city it’s a different story. Mirpur Khas is fifty-seven kilometres away, but it took us two and a half hours to get there. The roads were a mess, gouged out by fervent construction.

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Rattanabad has changed, too. I don’t even recognize the place. But I recognize the people, though they’ve all changed, too.

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To say that everything changes may be banal, because what else would everything do? But the banal things might be the most real, after all.

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April 18, 2017

Picnic

We went for a picnic in Noni’s village. I haven’t seen them for eight years. The children all grew up. The adults haven’t changed much. I was showered with hugs and wet kisses. I didn’t realized how much I’d missed them.

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Ruth’s Maasi–mother’s sister

It’s not the same village they were in when I lived here. Apparently there was a quarrel with the landlord and they had to move.

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Ruth’s Maaser–mother’s sister’s brother

We found Ambo in the fields, planting cotton with his wife and kids. We crossed through on raised paths and sat in a little copse of trees. There were little green mangos already growing on one. We peeled some, and ate them with salt.

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Ambo tells me cotton is one of the best things to plant, because it grows all year round. He asked if we planted cotton in Canada. I said I was pretty sure we don’t. A few more relatives took a break from fieldwork to join us.

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I didn’t eat much, but I laughed a lot. I wondered why I hadn’t had a picnic in the field back when I lived here. Then someone started smoking hash, and I remembered that missionaries don’t often get invited where there’s hash in the air.

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I wonder what it would be like to live here now that I no longer believe I’m on God’s great mission to ‘fix’ everything.

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April 17, 2017

It’s been one week since I left my home.

Took a plane and went to Pakistan alone. My wife and kids must be missing me, and I still haven’t blogged at all about my journey.

Don’t blame me, it’s been a whirlwind.

I took a day in Karachi to rest and draw up energy. Considering how I feel now, it was a good choice. IMG_0081.JPG

Saddar is the only part of Karachi I know well, so I picked a hotel there. But it’s changed. What used to be an eternal excavation site has grown up into a mall. There’s a cinema and a Dunkin’ Donuts and everything–donut was a bit stale, but the coffee was great. I would have seen a movie but the one I wanted to watch started at 10:30 and I wasn’t looking forward to walking back to my hotel after midnight in Saddar.

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No Dunkin’ Donuts in Sanghar, of course. That’s where I’ll be spending most of my time, hanging with my in-laws. I haven’t been taking the best pictures because it’s been busy enough just sitting and eating and smiling with everyone.

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March 10, 2017

Genuine Draft

Sixty-five drafts are in my queue. They’re diverse. Not really posts, but post-like ideas. Everyone once in a while I’ll browse them, try to turn one into something worth showing. Usually I end up adding another draft to the pile. There were sixty-two in queue yesterday.

One is about a flashing ambulance and the two paramedics I saw walk calmly out. It sets up some cool images, but doesn’t land anywhere. Another starts into neat ideas on incarnational ministry, then fails to crystallize. There’s a list I started: Top Ten Signs you Grew up Brethren; I only have three items. And a Happy First Birthday post for my son who’ll be four next month. I bet there’s twenty thousand words of drafts here.

 

Oh jeez, look at that. Most of these are from when I put two spaces after a period. No wonder I can’t do anything with them.

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